This image shows only the swells directed at Aropaonui that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions through a typical April and is based upon 2880 predictions, one every 3 hours. The direction of the spokes show where quality surf generating swell comes from. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell was forecast.

The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was ESE, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the NW. The chart at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. For example, swells larger than 1.5 feet (0.5m) coincided with good wind conditions 44% of the time, equivalent to 13 days. Open sea swells exceeding >3m (>10ft) are unlikely to occur in a normal April but 6% of the time you can expect swell in the range 1.3-2m (4-6.5ft) 6%, equivalent to (2 days). Taking into account the proportion of these swells that coincided with expected offshore winds, and given the fact that Aropaonui is exposed to open water swells, we estimate that clean surf can be found at Aropaonui about 44% of the time and that surf is blown out by onshore wind 39% of the time. This is means that we expect 25 days with waves in a typical April, of which 13 days should be surfable.

IMPORTANT: Beta version feature! Swell heights are open water values from NWW3. There is no attempt to model near-shore effects. Coastal wave heights will generally be less, especially if the break does not have unobstructed exposure to the open ocean.